VIVAASA
by carpetfibers
Summary: Only two days, and already the headiness of before is a distant memory, barely strong enough to rise in resonance, to pine or grieve over. He is paying his dues to society; he is following the justice of the people. He is in exile. HGDM. Complete.
1. Day 2

_**A/N:**__ Taken from the Potter's Place 'Exile Challenge Prompt.' Obviously, it's not going to be entered in the contest. I just liked the idea too much to wait forever to share it. I'm going to publish two vignettes per week for the next six weeks. Depending upon how long it takes me finish it, it may be sooner. _

_**Disclaimer:**__ Standard spiel about all ownership belonging to JKR._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**Day 2 **

The clerk repeats the amount due for the third time, and for the second day in a row, he pushes his entire wallet into a stranger's hands. The currency is foreign to him, the papered bills and colored coins have no equivalents in his experience. His wallet returns to him, lighter than before, and hurriedly he walks toward nowhere, the greasy meat pastie warm in his hand and his suitcase an unfamiliar heaviness in his other. The park bench finds him eventually, its worn wooden panels and chipping paint a welcomed relief. He knows this bench, he knows its location, and in this city of foreign words and people- all spoken and distributed in the language of his birth- he has nothing else to make such a claim of.

He stinks of sweat and dirt; his silk collar flutters soiled against his neck, his throat bobbing with each distasteful bite. Hunger forces him to enjoy it, to feel greed over the trite greasy meal; he devours the pastie with the greenness of an infant. He doesn't understand moderation yet, the lesson never necessary for his past life. Only two days, and already the headiness of _before_ is a distant memory, barely strong enough to rise in resonance, to pine or grieve over.

He is paying his dues to society; he is following the justice of the people.

Night arrives too quickly, the tangled humidity of the day breaking way to the suffocating denseness of an equally thick evening. He sits and waits, not knowing what for, not knowing yet how to plan or prepare for the next day. His pride has lost itself in the past 48 hours, and unknowingly, he stares after each passing face like a man starved. He searches for the familiar, for the known, for anything that might spark a sense of possibility.

It arrives, finally, with hair tied back and lips pressed against the chilled softness of an ice cream cone.

He sees her from across the fountain, but he doesn't rise. He sits and waits, unfamiliar still with the grace of optimism, of hope. He only knows of immediacy, of fulfillment; he doesn't know what to do when faced with a prospect that might reject him. She approaches, her ice cream dribbling down the back of her hand. Absently, she wipes at it with her shirt, her quizzical gaze never leaving his.

"Malfoy," she says after a minute of staring, "are you hungry?"

He nods and remembers to breath.

She points her dwindling cone down past the park, toward a shaded sidewalk. "I'm just two blocks that way."

She pauses long enough for him to stand and gather his suitcase, her mouth concentrated on the melted mass of her cone. His chest tightens as he follows behind her, and four hours later, after a warm meal and chilled shower, as he lays sprawled on the blue couch that fills her living room, he recognizes the emotion as gratitude.

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**End Day 2**


	2. Day 37

_**A/N:**__ Taken from the Potter's Place 'Exile Challenge Prompt.' _

_**Disclaimer:**__ It's all JKR's._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**Day 37**

It is one month before he manages the words.

Her schedule is easy to learn. University in the mornings and work in the afternoons. He sees no sign of her wand or her magic. Dishes are washed and dried by hand; the floor is swept with a broom. She says nothing of his encampment on her couch, and every day at noon, she returns home long enough to prepare a simple lunch. He eats and feels more of that tightness, that inexplicable twisting in his chest. He tries to remember her as she was years before, an annoyance and impediment. He tries to remember her as she was then, and only then does the tightness relieve itself.

He reads during the long hours of her absence; he reads the books that line her shelves and pile behind the doorway. He reads the discarded newspapers in the rubbish bin and the months-old periodicals that border her hall closet. He learns slowly, unwilling to request assistance despite her numerous offers. She says nothing when she returns home and finds him on her couch still, his brow furrowed and lips pressed. She retreats to change clothing, moves to the kitchen, and leaves the finished dish on the end table beside him. He eats but does not thank; he finishes but does not clean up. He pretends the part of a visiting dignitary, of the esteemed guest.

He takes and uses until the day he finishes the last book, and then, he opens the suitcase that followed him to the blue couch in the small room. The wallet is no longer an item of ciphers and cryptic messages; he understands it now, and the baby step for others is the giant leap for him. He steps beyond the front door for the first time since those two days of misery and flinches in the sunlight.

"Malfoy, you cooked," she observes, hours later, surprise etched across her plain features.

"I made sandwiches," he corrects her, frowning. "And the soup came from a can, but it's hot."

She stares at him, her brown eyes wide in an empathy he cringes against. He cannot hide the disgust he feels having stooped to the mundane act of using a microwave. Science- technology- the Muggles call it; artless and obvious, he renames it.

"It's good," she tells him after a few bites. "Thanks, by the way. It's nice to come home and have something waiting for me."

"Like I said, Granger, it's soup from a can and pre-sliced bread with cheese. Nothing remarkable about it." Before, the meal would have taken three wrist flicks and fourteen seconds of concentration. Ten minutes were missing from his life due to the meal; he wondered at the lack of regret he felt for that lost patch of time.

"Still." She smiles, the gesture unnervingly warming. "Thank you all the same."

He dislikes that she says the words so easily, and in the morning, he finds her note by the hall closet. She made a space for him there, a notch in the wall to claim as his own. He unpacks his suitcase and finds his dress robes, worn during the sentencing. The fabric stretches sinuously against his fingers, and in a fit of pique, he shoves the remainders of his life back into the bag. The empty closet watches him as he returns to his place on the couch, listless and angry.

"Thanks," he tells her that evening, over another meal of soup and sandwiches. "But this isn't my home."

Her lips part, a semblance of unhappiness marring the soft lines, but she nods and does not press. "Okay."

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**End Day 38**


	3. Day 61

_**A/N:**__ Based on the Potter's Place 'Exile' Challenge Prompt. Plainly, it's not being submitted for the contest. I just liked the idea, and it sort of wrote itself thus far. I might just make this a daily update while I work on the next chapter of TSU RAI KU. As always, thanks for the support!_

_**Disclaimer: **JKR owns all.  
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**VIVAASA**

_**by: carpetfibers**_

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**Day 61**

The door is cracked open, and in between the shadows of the unlit room, there flashes hurried patches of her moving figure. Each passing movement shows a new development. Hair up, then down, neither curly or straight, simply a thick mass of entanglement. He questions the texture, surely such a heap must catch on the fingers, ensnare the hands. She emerges, finally, wearing red, the skirt falling to her knees and shoulders bare.

She gestures to her back. "Help me?"

He rises, overly aware of his greater height and knots the slim strap that holds up her dress. "You're going out," he says, a question not necessary.

She nods, dragging the weight of her hair to one shoulder, a gold clip trapping it in place. "Just a small thing, really. I wouldn't usually get so dressed up, but you know- it's supposed to be a nice sort of place."

She smiles, in an artless unconscious sort of way, and he grows annoyed, bothered by the ease in which she shows her happiness. "Your wand isn't going to fit in that," he tells her, pointing to the small bag in her hands.

She pauses in her rummaging, her purse forgotten. The smile leaves her lips. "It'll be fine."

Her lips do not move again until a knock at the door summons her into her shoes and outside. Through the door, he listens as she exchanges greetings, a low voice responding in carefree tones to her own. In the kitchen he finds a chipped mug and relishes the rush of comfort that skims his blood when he smashes it into the counter. The fragments reverberate in the still air, and he remembers a time when it was impossible to ever permanently damage something.

It is the first piece of the mundane that he's enjoyed, and briefly, he wonders whether the Ministry would be pleased with this development. He imagines not.

"It's chocolate," she tells him at midnight. He is awake when she returns, and he pretends to not notice the smudged make-up or freed hair. "Come on, there's nothing quite as good as birthday cake."

He only eats because she's watching; he only finishes it because she seems so pleased. He does not shudder when she touches his shoulder, passing by the couch to her bedroom door beyond. Her fingers disappear beneath her hair, and the dress loosens on her shoulders. "Good night," she says.

It is her birthday, and he does not return the courtesy. He sits, his back to her shut door, and closes his eyes. The lidded darkness appeases nothing of the vision remaining; his skin forgets nothing of her light touch. He blames proximity, and yet, before sleep can completely claim him, he opens the empty hall closet and fills it. His suitcase, vacated of its holdings, is left beside her door. He tells himself it is not purposefully done, and then he sleeps, his dreams carrying him past her waking and through the press of her hand on his cheek.

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**End Day 62**


	4. Day 99

_**Disclaimer: **__JKR owns all._

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**VIVAASA**

_**by: carpetfibers**_

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**Day 99**

"Play with me," the pigtailed girl orders.

"No," he answers, and yet he does not resist when she grabs his larger hand with her two little ones. He becomes the playground monster; the sandbox is the land of milk and honey. A picnic table marks his domain, all sulfur and brimstone, and all the children scream and laugh as he moves toward them. He assures himself he only acts as such because it is the job, and he had said he would do it.

"Monster Dray-go!" they shout at him, fleeing his approach and seeking sanctuary in plastic tubes dressed like fallen logs.

He feels the lightness of their youth, their innocence. He wonders at its absence in his childhood. He recalls only greediness and need; he does not remember this thing called play, and as he watches the children's parents arrive to tote their tots home, something twists and gives in his chest. He is smiling and his eyes burn, and he hates that she is the one to notice this about him.

"You're good with them," she tells him, pleasure plain in her voice. She tidies the small stack of notebooks and school books from the homework table. Her hand grasps the left behind pencils, an uneven column of reds and blues and yellows.

"They're just kids. I'm not so useless that I can't handle dealing with a couple of brats for a few hours a day." He gripes and snaps, and she smiles at him, unfazed.

"And yet, they really seem to like you." Her hair is braided this afternoon, the plaited strands cling to her sweater, and the temptation to touch forces an anger to his features.

"What do they know anyway? They're perfectly happy as long as I go about trying to catch them, playing their monster." The pigtailed girl waves at him from the slide, her gap-toothed grin wide and ridiculous. He hates her in that instant, hates the child for its unawareness and lack of discernment. What did that child know of him and his past? What did that child know of him to approach so unguarded? "It doesn't matter who it is- anyone would do."

The pigtailed girl leaves, her hand caught in her mother's tight clasp. She waves again, and he hates her for it. He hates, and yet, it is not a hatred that spoils in his chest. It is nothing ugly or evil; it is torment and it is guilt, but it is not hate. "None of these parents- or their children- would let me within a meter of them if they knew who I was, what I did," he says, loathing the self pitying tone that cakes his words.

She shakes her head, her brown eyes clear and uncluttered. "But they don't know. Can't you let that be enough? Sometimes ignorance is nice, don't you think?" She waits for his answer- an answer he will not give- and her lips close on the lid of a plastic water bottle. She drinks deeply, and he watches, wanting- and yet, not understanding.

"Thirsty?" She offers the water bottle to his mouth, and he takes it, drinking in turn. He realizes he hates her, too, in that same mix of non-hate and guilt. He hates the ease in which she speaks with him, eats with him- the ease with which she smiles at him. He hates that she does all this, and yet she hasn't the same guise of unawareness as the playground misfits do. She has known him for too long, and she knows him too well.

He drinks and thinks of her lips having touched that same hard press of plastic; he drinks and wills the thoughts away.

"I can try to find something else for you, if you really don't like it," she tells him, as they leave the park grounds. "I'm sure there's something else local that I can drum up."

Her hand brushes his bare arm briefly and purposely, he slows to encourage the accident to a second occurrence. He passes the bench he spent his first two days of Earth-bound humdrum attached to; he thinks of the small flat, the uncomfortable couch he calls a bed, and the closed door that leads to her room. He stops.

"Malfoy?" She pauses as well, her expression all patience and interest. He looks at her and knows: he does not hate her.

"It's fine- the job, it's fine."

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**End Day 99**


	5. Day 127

_**A/N: **__Thanks again for the care and support!_

_**Disclaimer: **__It's all JKR's anyway. Like you didn't know._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**Day 127**

A hesitant frost dusts the ground. His breath billows, lithesome and wistful, as he stands and watches her grieve. The nameplate is a simple affair, two names ordain it, bound by a gold curlicue. She asked him that morning, before the sky was light, if he would come to meet her parents. He expected tea and awkward conversation, not mourning violets and frozen dew.

"It was a car accident, two years ago," she tells him. Her voice remains steady, a soft hymn. "Dad never drove, really, but it was raining that morning and they didn't like to use the floo. The tire hit a frozen patch, the car skid, and if it weren't for being a witch, I would have died just as crumpled and broken as they did." She lifts her hand toward the gray horizon, her fingers spread. "This intangible, this magic in me- it protected me but not them. I wonder why that is. . ."

"It's not something you could control," he answers her unasked question.

"I know." She kneels, placing the fistful of violets on the grave. "I know, but knowing something and feeling something- they are two very different things. The car accident, my parents' death, and me with only a scratch on my elbow: none of it was my fault, and yet, I still have regrets."

She wears her hair loose, and the frigid wind dislikes its happenstance. Her cheeks, dusted with sun and warmth from the summer, appear sallow and uncolored. Black is not her color, he decides; the clothes envelope her in their muted darkness, and she seems too small, too fragile for his liking. He prefers her in the morning brightness, diffident and cheerful. He knows his place then; he knows his situation and hers, and there is no frayed grey to confuse and impede.

"I might have had more time with them, if I hadn't wanted to be a witch so very much." She does not cry, and yet her words and lips weep. "If not for being a witch, we might never have been on the road that day. I had wanted to surprise them, you see- I wanted to show off a bit." She shrugs, a self-mocking gesture and again, her hand reaches for the sky. "The recovery efforts were going so well, and I wanted them to see that, to see the amount of work we had completed in such a small amount of time. I wanted them to stop worrying about me all the time."

The violets, resting near her feet, stir in the undertow of the wind. Their slow decay is evident already, in the browning of the stems and wilting of the petals. He watches them die, not daring his eyes to venture near her own. "You shouldn't blame yourself," he says, feeling the cliché of his words and disliking their stiffness in his mouth.

"This is my penance." She steps back from the grave and the violets scatter. "They were happy, my parents, as Muggles. I think they would want me to be, too."

He understands her meaning, even without understanding her motivations. He has never known a life without magic; even in the present, with its ability vanished from his fingertips and his blood, he still lives as if he were a wizard. He does not know of any other sort of way to live. He might wake without a wand, and sleep without the thread of a charm, but there in his thoughts, his first language and breath, are all things magical. He cannot imagine any other way to exist than to be as he is. Even wandless and stripped of his ability, he is a wizard. And she-

"You're still a witch," he tells her.

"Being a witch has never made me terribly happy." She turns, the movements stilted and stifled. Her brown eyes are too large, too unguarded, and he makes the mistake of looking back.

"Then are you happy now?" he asks and carefully, he brings her cheek to his chest. She shudders there, a soft tremor of chilled skin and naked bleakness. Her fingers clutch at his sleeves, and when she answers, the words are clouded with tears.

"I don't know."

Distantly, he is aware of his grip growing tighter around her middle and a dampness near his heart. She is silent throughout, and he cannot remember when he was last warmer.

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**End Day 127**


	6. Day 164

_**Disclaimer: **__JKR owns all._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**Day 164**

The pub vibrates with noise and heat. He slouches, mouth attached to a glass filled with a bitter taste and eyes unable to glance away. She wears red, her shoulders bare once removed of the thick wool coat. Her date keeps a hand on her back, and she does not notice its continuous touch. She is oblivious and energetic, her chatter full of New Year's phrasing and laughter. He drinks more deeply and watches as she presses her lips against the date's cheek ever so briefly. He does not realize his glass is empty until it's replaced with another, a stranger's lipsticked smile accompanying it.

"You here alone?" the woman asks. He watches as the date's hand touches the pinned up hair, a tangle coiling around one of the foreign fingers.

He watches and drinks again. "Yes."

The woman dances with intention, her body slick and flush against his own. He understands the signs, the wordless invitation given him, and when the woman moves to leave the pub, an hour before the new year rings in, he leaves with her. He takes her to the small flat, empty and vacant of light. He does not wait for a voiced permission, and already there is a mouth hot and wet on his own. He feels the hair, black and fine pass through his fingers; he tastes the soft flesh of the throat and smells the heaviness of a musky perfume, foreign and stale to his tongue. The darkness hides the woman's features from definition, and if he only looks at her skin, he can pretend as he wants. He can imagine the hushed pants as someone else's, the plush damp as another's inviting tightness. But the hair runs through his fingers, there is no fight, no ensnarement. The rushed cries are low and husky, nothing like the voice that echoes internally, even now as his own physical want exacts itself, near the base of his spine, a dulled throbbing, ache that spears his blood.

The woman is speaking and he hears nothing of it; he pushes himself off of her, his stripped chest chilled with sweat and exertion. The woman is telling him her name and he doesn't want to know it; he straightens his pants, zipping the fly and re-buttoning. The woman leaves and he hears only the slam of the door. He has relief until the door opens at midnight, amidst sounds of cheering and celebration. The street and neighbors chorus in the new annum, and she only stares at him, the streetlight illuminating the black lace of a forgotten garment near his feet.

Her date is not present and her coat is missing. Her chest heaves and breathlessly, her voice translating the unwitnessed run to the doorway, she greets him. "Happy New Year, Malfoy."

He sees her naked shoulders and bare neck, the cold night air flowing in from behind her. She shivers and he rises, his hands already moving to touch her. She turns from him, her lips unhappy, and he stops. Fireworks erupt in the distance, drenching the doorway in colored brilliance. "Granger-"

"I should have considered this before. Um, maybe leave a bag or a piece of string on the doorway?" She interrupts, her eyes feigning an interest in the sky battle overhead. "You know, just to save us some embarrassment."

"Granger, look at me."

Stubbornly, she refuses, and with hands betrayed by trembling, he forces her to turn around. The unhappiness rests in her eyes and in the painful curve of her lips, and he opens his mouth to explain, to make her understand. He opens his mouth and says nothing, a restless anger seizing him. There should be no cause to make excuses, to give reasons. She holds no ties over him, and he- he is a lodger and nothing more.

He pushes a jacket, one of his own from the hall closet, into her hands. "You should wear something if you're going to stay outside."

His jacket is ignored and when she leaves the doorway seconds later, that lingering unhappiness clinging to her, he stays behind. She does not return that night, and he spends his early morning hours with his temple in his hands, desiring something he does not wish for. He recognizes, in her absence, that it is not just the physical he longs for. There's a great intangible he misses and hungers after. Her presence, when near him, is a balm, and her presence, when away from him, is a thing dearly sought after. He does not know when it became so immeasurable; he only knows that his physical relief is nothing compared to the one he searches after.

He should leave her home, he recognizes; he should leave before an unimagined something happens. He should leave, and yet he stays, still. He feels for her, and he is too addicted to that strange fluttering called _feeling _to do anything except obey it.

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**End Day 164**


	7. Day 204

_**Disclaimer: **__JKR owns all._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**Day 204**

The playground empties earlier than usual, the cold weather forcing parents to retrieve their children before the streetlights awaken. She missed her shift, and he spent the afternoon responding in ignorance as to the reason. He hurries his steps, barely pausing near the bench he still refers to as _his_, and he tells himself that it is not worry that spurs his haste. He insists, as he opens the locked door and enters the flat, that he does not rush to her doorway due to concern. It is not a late night hour that allows for weakness or self reflection; the sun is still present and he can be unaffected by her.

Her door is open and she lies above the blankets, feet bare, asleep. His heart stirs and disobedient legs carry him to her side.

She sleeps with her lips pursed, as if deep in the midst of a puzzle. Her eyelids, thin and translucent to his gaze, flicker and flit, and her small hands tense in tight fists. It is intractable, this connection he feels to her. He remembers her in school; he remembers his adamant dislike of her and her friends, and everything she did and said and felt and believed. He remembers the times he wished to hurt her, to force her into silence. He remembers those early days of acquaintance and how never, not once, he felt anything except resentment and dislike. He remembers he used to hate her with that easy childish loathing that came to him so frequently before.

She sighs, and his breath catches. The distance is a short one, a mere few steps and a slight climb, and in the half hour it takes for him to cross it, he thinks only of the way she felt when she cried, the heaviness of her hair on his hands, and the brief touch she gave his forehead in the mornings. She is not beautiful, and yet she is something more, and he knows this as a truth even as he slips in beside her, drawing the warmth of her blankets over them. She shifts toward his weight and then she is there, cheek against his chest and brow cool against his lips. Sleep finds him quickly and he tells himself, as the thick darkness of dreams overtakes him, that there are some choices that involve no decision at all.

He reminds himself of this the next morning, when he awakens to an empty bed and breakfast on a tray beside him. He reminds himself of this later that night, when he returns home in the darkness after hours spent wasting seconds in a pub with a half filled glass. He reminds himself of this then, as he avoids returning to what he believes will be a conversation. He is not ready for words or confrontation; he has been a coward for too much of his life to change so suddenly. He reminds himself of this as he returns to the flat, void of lamp light.

His pillow on the couch is missing and her door is open. She is asleep and within minutes, so is he. When he wakes next, she is still there, and he reminds himself that there are some decisions in which a choice is unnecessary.

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**End Day 205**


	8. Day 236

_**Disclaimer:**__ I own nothing. It's all JKR's. _

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**Day 236**

The owl is one he has seen before. The white feathers are more grey than snow now, and its former dislike of his hand is absent. It leaves the envelope on the table, and he reads the name slowly, a tired anger stirring in his stomach. He dislikes the name and its owner; he has always disliked the name and its owner. Years before, when he was young and simple in his selfishness, he once offered the possibility of friendship. Years before, when he had no friends or equals, when his only companions were lackeys who could neither think for themselves or for him, he had chanced to strike a connection. The rejection's bitter taste, from years before, still lingers, and all it takes is crooked handwriting on an envelope to remind of this.

He opens the letter and reads, not caring that it's not for him. He reads and the anger grows. News, good tiding, concern, entreating- each phrase is layered with feeling and fondness, each word is underlined with distant notes of _I miss you_ and _Come back home_ and _I need you_, and he hates the whole of it with a deep wretchedness. When she comes home that evening, he is still there, the letter open and naked on the table, her discovered wand beside it. Her smile leaves her lips and hurriedly, she snatches the two spare pieces of parchment to her breast. "How dare you-" she begins, but he is faster and has had the entire day to spend thinking of reasons to be angry.

He feels betrayed, and this makes him all the more spiteful. "Coward. Liar." He seethes, each word landing with visible affect.

Her hair is loose today, an increasing dampness on its crown as the few flurries caught there melt in the kitchen's warmth. She is pale, and he enjoys the impact with a sickening relish. "You said this was your penance; you made it sound as if you were doing this for your parents. Giving up magic, pretending you're not a witch- all you're doing is running away from it. You're hiding here, in this pathetic excuse for a life, acting as if you're alone in the world. Liar."

She stands passively, her expression as one struck, and yet, she acts as one satisfied. She seems prepared, somehow; she plays the martyr and the urge to strike her physically clouds his thoughts. Instead, he reaches for the porcelain vase he knows to be her mother's and drops it, casually, never removing his eyes from her face. The reaction is immediate; she wilts and lands heavily on her knees. "How could you?" she cries, her fingers grazing the littered pieces. "You know this belonged to my m-"

"You can fix it." He drops her wand beside her. "Use your wand and fix it."

She picks up the wand, a visible flinch shuddering through her lips as the stretch of wood settles in her palm. An ache of his own begins boiling near his spine; he can remember the exact texture of his wand, the weight and feel of it as it broke into his skin. He never forgets its absence, and her expression fools no one. "_Reparo_," she says and his blood burns.

Her magic feels of desperation, hints at completion, and inexplicably warms him. She does not move from the floor, her wand clutched in hand. "Grang-"

But she is faster and has the greater anger. "Bastard. Murderer." She hisses, her lips jerking in an exhausting staccato. "You have no right to force me into anything! What I choose to do or not do is my business alone. So what if I don't want to use magic anymore? So what if I live like a Muggle? There's nothing wrong or cowardly about it! Is it so awful that I want a chance to have a normal life? Is it?" She stands and pushes and prods, her fist a heavy force on his chest. She is all aggression and anger, and he recognizes that she speaks in earnest and that she is hurt by his actions.

He does not care. "It is- when you're a witch. It's not something you can just stop doing- it's who you are."

"I was a Muggle for the first eleven years of my life, I can be one again. I can be happy just like anyone else-"

"But you're not happy, are you Granger?" Her fist halts its rise and energy slips from her shoulders with his uttered truth. "You felt relief, didn't you, when you held your wand? You felt _right _then, didn't you? You felt complete and whole and you couldn't see it, but your whole body was smiling with just holding it, and _damn it_, but Granger, I'm right and you can't ignore that."

But she is not listening to him, she is withdrawn and searching for excuses. She speaks to his chest in a voice cold and brittle. "I hated you in school, and I hated that you made me feel that way. I couldn't stand your face or your voice. I thought you were a weak, selfish, spoiled prat, and when I learned that you had survived the last battle- when I learned that in the very end you suddenly turned sides to ours, I felt nothing at all, and more than anything else, I hated you for that. I could forgive anyone, but with you, I couldn't manage it, and do you know what that did to me? Can you understand what that sort of self-realization does to a person like me?"

He wants to understand her; he wants to touch that tangled, tousled hair of hers. He wants to kiss the hollow of her throat as she cries out; he wants to hear her whisper his name in a pained joy. He wants her broken and surrendered; he wants her whole and tender. "No, I don't. But I'm not like you."

She laughs, and he's holding her shoulders, her skin warm beneath the thin sweater. She stops and grows quiet, her mouth hidden beneath the curtain of hair that spills over his hands. "_God_, I hated you for so long and yet now-"

She is kissing him, and he thinks only of the way her lips melt like velvet chocolate over his. He tastes the lingering peppermint of an earlier confection, and she sighs into his mouth, a low sound that reverberates into his blood and sends his thoughts keening. She is kissing him, and he forgets the past and the present.

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**End Day 236**


	9. Day 251

_**Disclaimer: **__JKR owns all._

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**VIVAASA**

_**by: carpetfibers**_

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**Day 251**

She is a quiet in the darkness, a lip gnashing silence that refuses abandon. He treats each joining as a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down by her despite of- and perhaps even in tremulous spite of- his pleasing touch. He knows she feels enjoyment; he knows she craves the nightly encounters. She always returns home just short of breath, clothes rumpled and mouth relieved. She eats without tasting, and it is always she who moves first. She is quiet in the night.

She is a single cry in the blankets, a nail wrenching gash along his back. He leaves each mark untouched, a visual representation of her surrender. He never reminds her of the night before; there are no affectionate pecks shared in the mornings or traded while watching a late afternoon show. He has held her hand, once, in the park, but it was she who touched first, and he tells himself that such things are normal. She hides her mouth in the pillows and does not let him see her face as she loses herself in the blankets.

She is a huddled warmth in the moonlight, a shapeless curve against his chest. He watches her in the moments after, sleep far from his thoughts. His mental calendar reminds him of its existence in those seconds, and he pushes away from the creeping reality. He has never wanted for time to stop its pull; he has never wanted for time to cease. His life of complication and plotting, childish and selfish in its greedy need to exact itself, has no place in this current moment of now. Her hair is always free in the dark hours, its tendrils caught in his fingers, and she never denies him that comfort. She stirs but does not wake, and each accidental touch is electric in the moonlight.

She is gone in the morning, a slight indentation left behind in the mattress. His breakfast made in early hours and left beside him waits, slightly chilled. There is something different each morning, and he takes it as a hand-off. He returns the favor with the evening meal, and to the neighbors and the anonymous world, their lives exist as couple, as a together, and some distant part of his mind has begun referring to his place on her bed as home. He spends the morning hours, the meal untouched, listless in her room. His eyes watch the ceiling, seeing nothing and remembering times past. He attempts the impossible, he attempts to not think, to not consider- to not plan. He lies still and it is in the noontime that he moves, a violent action, both purposeful and direct. He straightens the creases from the sheets, folds and tucks and pulls the blankets into their proper form, and when his hands are finished, all traces of the night before are hidden.

He sits then, head bowed and temple cradled, and waits for proof that he has not been imagining it. That he has not been dreaming it. He waits, because in the night time, the dark hours, in the hazy light of the moon, he has something he never had.

The door opens. "Hi," she says. Her hair is tied back today, the pony tail resting youthful and strange when framed by her quizzical eyes. "Sleep well?"

He stares in silence, the moment only two seconds of heartbeat and breath. His chest swells, the pain deep and dear in its peculiar newness. "Very. You?"

She smiles crookedly. "Yes, but now I'm famished. The lecture this morning felt like ages- what say you to heading out for curry? I'm dying for something spicy."

He nods and reaches for his coat. As he follows beside her, listening to her effortless chatter, he recognizes the pain for its real origin. How peculiar that he should feel it as an ache, when all the rest of the planet called it happiness. He takes her hand this time, and the surge of pleasure that flushes her cheeks twists his heart.

He is happy, and _gods_, it is good.

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**End Day 282**


	10. Day 364

_**Disclaimer: **__Everything belongs to JKR._

_Thank you again for all the continued feedback and support. I very much appreciate it. More author's notes at the end.  
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**VIVAASA**

_**by: carpetfibers**_

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**Day 364**

He hears her breathing and knows she is still awake.

"Your favorite color isn't really green, is it?" she asks, moments later.

His lips quirk tiredly, and he shifts to face her. "Yes it is, but I'm not terribly mad about silver."

"Hmm. . .I've never particularly cared for gold, although it does go nicely with red, most times." She sighs and takes his hand, tracing over his fingers lightly. "I rather like blue, though."

"It suits you. I always thought you ought to have been with that lot instead." He speaks of things much as she does, without specifics and with the unvoiced agreement that there be no need to mention names or titles.

"You wouldn't have done too badly there yourself, you know," she points out and he laughs, the sound light and weary and fond. "Really, you might have," she insists. "All it would have taken was some dedication, some application."

"No. . . I was exactly where I ought to have been," he tells her, the darkness granting him the chance to speak as he wants. She inspires him to honesty and he doesn't mind it. "Ambition and cunning are decent sorts of traits. We- none of us- knew how to rightly use them, though. It was a constant contest, each person attempting to drag you down in his attempt to climb ahead."

"Draco, you don't have to-"

He shushes her and tucks her cheek against his chest. "What were you like when you were younger?"

Her hushed sigh tickles his bare skin. "My mum would say I was precocious, but to anyone else, I was an annoying little sprog. I was always asking the very questions I oughtn't, and it got to the point where I wasn't invited to the birthday parties or play dates anymore. It was alright, though, because I had my da and my mum, and somehow, even then, I knew that was enough."

He can picture her then, so much smaller and slighter, and imagines he would have enjoyed bullying her even then. "I wish-"

"I used to see you after class, in the greenhouses. I never wondered about it then, but now I do. What would you do in there?" she interrupts, and her lips kiss cold words and letters on the curve of his sternum.

"Read, sometimes- I'd sleep mostly. There was one patch of moss, in greenhouse four, that lent me the most pleasant sort of dreams, empty of everything." He remembers the solace the damp underbrush had given him in his later years at school. And when the greenhouses had been closed to him, he had escaped to the bathrooms and a soggy ghost. He clutches her and orders, "Tell me a story."

"What sort of story?" she asks, and his throat vibrates with the faint caress of her breath.

"It doesn't matter," he says, closing his eyes. "A good story."

He is nearly asleep when she speaks again. "There was once a little girl who lived in a little house in a little wood, and every day, she did the same little things. The days passed, each one a little less hard than the last, and after a while, the little girl convinced herself she was happy."

She stirs, and and he feels the lingering damp of her cheeks. "Until one day, she came across a little, lost dog. Something struck her when she saw his little, lost face, and so the little girl brought him back to her little house, and the days passed, each one a little better than the last. The little girl who had lived alone for so long stopped feeling so lonely, and the little, lost dog stopped feeling so lost."

Her voice trembles, but her words do not falter. Her hand tightens in the sheets, and he does not open his eyes. He knows she is crying, but he has still not learned courage. "After a while, the little house in the little wood began to feel much bigger, and the little girl began to call it home. She came to her home every day, found the little, lost dog waiting for her, and they were happy. But you see, the little, lost dog had not always been so little, or so lost, and his time in the little woods was a limited one. The day finally came for the little, lost dog to return to his world beyond the little wood, and the little girl, because she loved him so very much, she-"

"Hermione," he whispers, the run of her syllables a tender enunciation against his lips. "Don't-"

"I know," she cries, and her soft tones break. "I know."

She inhales once, sharply, and then her warmth twists back to its side of the bed. She does not release his hand, and in the morning, when he slips away from her, he sees the wet pillow and the stain across her cheeks. She sleeps on, and he knows that when she wakes, she will see the empty bed and empty closet and missing suitcase, and then- then, she will know. He doesn't recognize the strange emotion that chokes him as he leaves her bed and flees the small flat.

The humidity swallows him, and in the park, he picks up the portkey thirty seconds early. Ten minutes later, in the privacy of a Ministry office, his wand back in his palm and his will free to charm and hex and jinx and transfigure to its full content, he weeps. He weeps and for once, he regrets.

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**End Day 365**

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_A/N_**_: No worries- it's not over yet. I intend on this continuing through for another two weeks with (hopefully) daily updates. I just wanted to share the meaning of the title. It was sort of an accidental discovery that I liked, but, right-- 'Vivaasa' is (roughly) the Sanskrit word for 'exile.' What charmed me about it, other than it being a Sanskrit word, was the 'viva' which is so very much like the Latin for 'to be a live' which is 'vivo vixi victum.' For those of us who studied Latin's child languages, we have the French 'vivre,' the Italian 'vivere,' the Portuguese 'viver,' the Spanish 'vivir,' and the Romanian 'viaţă.' Perhaps it's not connected, maybe it is- but yes, the title is, in a way, a pun. We have 'Exile' and 'To Live.' Just thought to share.  
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	11. One year, Day 17

_**Disclaimer:**__ JKR owns all. Taken from Potter Place's Exile Challenge._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 17**

The sky sifts listlessly, the clouds frayed ribbons overhead. He shades his eyes, the dead grass underfoot stretching endlessly over the grounds. The once full elms and sinuous alders pale leafless and grayed. It is summer, and the land shows no appearance of a recently passed spring. There is only the fearless yellow of the stubborn grasses, whose knee-high lengths show the only proof of life. The manor itself stands with equal resilience, and yet there is no luster, no shine- the opulence and grandeur he remembers so vividly are gone.

His childhood home; his teenage home; his family's once kingdom and proud glory is a relic, a ruin. The returned deed in his pocket, absent from his family's hands for nearly six years, stinks of a last laugh, a final rub in the dirt. He crosses the grounds and pulls open the heavy, creaking front door.

Torn drapes, scarred planking, cracked marble, stained wallpaper, grime and dust, disuse and misuse: all abused; his room is the only room unmarred in both his memory and reality. The thick softness of his bed sheets slip smooth and comforting through his fingers. His pillows still smell of sandalwood and cedar. The shelf that wraps the ceiling displays his many school-won awards and medals; pictures flash caught moments of his younger, smirking self, his younger, softer mother, and his younger, unbroken father. An infamous family as told by the papers; a notorious family as whispered by others; and for him, simply a family- and this house is once again his home.

It is large; it is cold. It is money, old and pure, and it is all that is left of his name's station. He begins making the plans, the notes necessary to returning the manor to its former heights. It must be as it once was, he had decided, years earlier. Once it was back in his hands- once it was _his_- he would fix it all; he would undo all that had been done, in that time _before. _And then, he would be where he belonged.

Not sleeping on a couch in a tiny flat. Not sitting on a folding chair eating microwave-ed soups. Not watching the telly on mute. Not licking his fingers clean from the grease of a chips-filled newspaper. Not lying beneath an open window shirtless waiting for the temperature to drop. Not tripping out from a suddenly ice-cold shower. Not walking barefoot across linoleum-lined floors. Not breaking blocks of ice from a freezer door left open.

No, he is back where he belongs.

The jar leaves his fingers smudged with soot and dust but his palm fills with green powder. He throws it into the newly lit fireplace and waits for the expected face to make an appearance.

"Mr. Malfoy," the balding head greets.

"Sell it," he says.

"Are you sure, Mr. Malfoy? You only just received the deed back yesterday." The balding head is confused.

"I know." And he is confused as well. He is puzzled and he is worried, but none of that removes the conviction that he feels. "But it's not-" he pauses, unsure of how to explain it.

"I understand, sir," the balding head finishes, bobbing once in the affirmative. "It must not feel like home after so long. Perhaps you ought to give it a few more weeks- let the place grow back on you?"

He considers the decaying living room and imagines it back when the green and gold brocade hung in twin ramparts, the solid oak and marble of the dining room table laden with delicate wine glasses and the finest porcelain dishes. He imagines his mother seated in the corner, her robes impeccable and features contented; he imagines his father standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder and his lips curved proudly. He imagines himself beside them, and the picture cracks.

He imagines instead a folding chair and flowered tablecloth, and his decision is made.

"No," he says. "I don't want it anymore."

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**End Day 17**


	12. One year, Day 41

_**Disclaimer: **__It's all JKR's._

_**A/N: **__I want to thank everyone again for your continued support and reviews. They mean a great deal to me, and I especially appreciate the detail you put into them. Thanks again- and now for a change in perspective. Here's hoping it works._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 41**

The chocolate is lukewarm in her mouth, the liquid thick and heavy. She swallows without consideration, barely tasting and hardly thinking. She is studying, and the cafe has only witnessed her turn the page once. Her highlighter has bent to the paper only twice, and she had read the same two paragraphs thirty times. She is not focused, and once upon a time, this was her favorite subject. She loves the mystery, the intrigue, the flagrant politics and affairs; she loves the fiction, the lack of truth or reality. She loves that when she closes the book and sets it aside, there is nothing to feel guilty over. She does not need to worry for the people written of; she does not need to feel concern for their plight.

It is all make-believe, fairy tales, happily-ever-afters, and she used to love it.

She closes the novel and watches her chocolate, neglected and now room-temperature. She recognizes the feeling as lethargy; it's apathy she feels when she wakes and considers the new day before her. The monotony of before compared to the monotony of now is suffocating, and she spends each minute of it with a stilled, muted scream sitting on the back of her tongue. She misses him, but-

He made his choice, and she was dedicated to hers.

"Hi."

The man has brown eyes and blond hair so dark it nearly convinces her otherwise. He smiles and his cheeks crease from the much practised movement. "I see you here most Mondays, and some Fridays- you're a student, right?"

She nods, her throat sticky and heavy; words feel impossible when so cleanly confronted. He sits across from her, not minding her stack of books and pens. "I thought so; you're always reading and jotting down notes. I'm J--- by the way; and you?"

She busies herself with tucking hair behind her ear; she doesn't hear his name. _James_ or _John_ or _Jack- _it doesn't matter, they're all the wrong name, and so she replies with unhappiness in her voice and regret in her eyes, and a wish for something she stubbornly refuses to hope for. "Hermione; I'm Hermione."

The man with the wrong name talks and jokes, and she laughs once. He's smooth and sincere and interested, and for a short moment, she forgets about the scream in her throat and the stone in her chest. She forgets until he asks the wrong question, and then he is everything wrong and incorrect and missing.

"How about dinner on Friday? Do you like curry- I know this great place just a short ways from here."

But she is already shaking her head sorry, and the words spill out after. She apologizes and declines, and the phone number he gives her is dropped in her emptied cup. She finds a new cafe the next day and spends her afternoon reading the same paragraph of intrigue and mystery over and over until she can pretend to love it again.

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**End Day 42**


	13. One year, Day 89

**_Disclaimer: _**_It's all JKR's._

_**A/N:** Sorry about missing yesterday. I'm without my notebook for the next few weeks and can only work on this from work. Another update later today._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 89**

It is a required portion of the rehabilitation process, and when he leaves his flat that morning, slightly burnt toast gripped in his mouth, he finds no reason to dislike it. His counselor is small and rotund, with full hair and reflexive smiles. The man serves watery tea, with leaves that float to the top and stick to the teeth.

He always refuses and the small man always smiles. "Despite the somewhat nontraditional manner in which your education was finished, you did quite well Mr. Malfoy. I see you did some studying in France?"

He nods and does not expand. He cares little for the brief time spent in France before extradition returned him to his motherland. Three months of unwelcoming relatives and made-up names; three months of a bent back and bloodshot eyes, driven to near blindness from noxious fumes and disagreeable ingredients.

"There are the normal Ministry entry positions available. You are slightly older than the usual entrants, but I'm sure, considering your circumstances, that it shouldn't pose a problem. The Department of the Owlery has two vacancies- how fare you with animals?" The small man smiles and holds his quill poised.

He shakes his head in dissent, and the paper is set is aside. For an hour he continues so, barely verbal, undeniably passive in the face of the man's granite cheer. He finds no interest, no charm in anything mentioned. He remembers, fitfully, afternoons spent outdoors and shoes logged with sand and dried leaves. His hands are restless. "Don't you have anything outside of the Ministry?" he asks, finally.

"Outside of the Ministry?" The small man shuffles papers and squints. "We only have two businesses who opted into the program for consideration-"

"What are they?" He is tired and constricted. His world feels narrow; he is known and named. There is nothing of anonymity; there is no chance to escape recognition. There is no escape. "Just choose for me," he says after ten minutes of not listening. "Nothing at the Ministry. I don't-" he pauses. Once upon a time, he wanted differently, but now he knows differently. "-I would prefer someplace less crowded."

The small man nods and drinks his weak tea. The owl comes three days later, the scroll in its talons terse and pointed. He finds the shop on a corner two streets down from Diagon's bricked entry. The shop's windows are cloudy with soot and age; its owner greets him wordlessly, and he spends his first day sorting books in silence. His second and third day pass in equal quiet, and not once is he bothered or stopped or stared at. He is invisible; he is the background, and on his fifth day there, a small hand tugs on his workman's apron and he stares down.

"Where can I find the book with the dragons and princess?" the little girl asks, her hair in a long plait.

He points to a shelf three stacks down and the little girl skips away, her mother in tow. He spends the remainder of his day in the same pursuits of his previous days, and when he walks home, the air bitter in its wind and breath, he smiles.

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**End Day 97**


	14. One year, Day 144

_**Disclaimer: **It's all JKR's._

_**A/N: **Here's the second half, as promised. Another update on Monday. Thanks again for the continued support. I'm very pleasantly surprised by how easily this story seems to write itself. I should really thank the prompters at Potters Place for their excellent challenge idea._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 144**

The day is too bright, the sky too brittle for a day of mourning. She is two weeks and three days late, and she only blames herself. She watches the passing concrete walls of the Underground, graffiti littering the slabs. Professions of love, declarations of war, and phrases prophesying the end of it all. The man behind her stirs and his elbow finds her ribs. He does not apologize and she traces the window grime with a gloved finger. In her arms sit a bouquet of lilies, their fragrance bothering at her nose. The violets are out of season the florist told her.

She did not tell the florist how every year prior violets had been there. She did not tell the florist how just a year ago, she had stopped at that same shop and purchased a bundle. She did not tell the florist how just a year before, she had not been alone.

She trades the Underground for a pebbled road. She watches her shoes, sturdy brown ones that ignore the uneven earth and broken pavement, and wonders how a silence spent by oneself can feel so different from a silence shared between two. No hand to accidentally brush, no tall form to lean against or pretend confidence in. There is only the wool of her coat and the thick cotton of her gloves. She is missing him, even now, on a day when her thoughts ought to be elsewhere, and that recognition makes her angry.

Angry at him, angry at herself, but mostly, beneath it all, she is sad. She is bad at pretending; she acts out the ordinary, the mundane, each day, and each day, the medicine grows more bitter. There is less and less to claim as sugar, less and less to name as enjoyments. She hates her flat with its empty couch and solitary dishes. She still prepares a breakfast too large for one person, and each evening, she returns home, seeking out the scent of a waiting meal. Instead, there is only darkness and shadow, and she watches the evening sitcoms, her stomach empty and her lips unhappy.

She takes the second left, the broken road changing to a smaller walking path, the smudge of earth marking it from the colorless grasses that border the edges. The graveyard is as it ought to be: lifeless, monochrome, made up of an unending river of engraved stones and splashes of color dotting the left behind bouquets. She fades into the rows of markers, and when she finds her parents, the tombstone a solid piece of gray, she cries out.

The lilies land at her feet, the feeble white petals crushed beneath her knees as she drops to the ground. Every year before, the grave was bare but for the scarcest remains of her previous visit. There still rests the dust and dried carcass of her violets from before, and beside them, in vibrant hues still, rest another bouquet. Violets like before. Too happy and cheerful for a graveyard like before. Ostentatious, pretentious, and out of season, but they were her mother's favorites, and her parents' home was never without them.

"Bastard," she accuses the space where his shoes must have stood. Her voice is too happy for the word, and when her eyes water and she bows her head, it is not grief that swells in her chest.

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**End Day 144**


	15. One year, Day 185

_**A/N:** I got my notebook back tomorrow, so Vivaasa's back in business. I should have another update later today and again on late Sunday._

_**Disclaimer:** It's all JKR's._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 185**

The windows tease with flashes of color and streaming music. Reds, greens, and the rare blues; it is Christmas and Yuletide and celebration, and in the evening shadow, he walks the alleys with shoulders stooped. His flat harbors a bare tree, pushed on him by an interfering neighbor. He waters it daily, and despite its increasing decay, he anticipates the pine scent each afternoon when he returns home. He is shopping for a decoration.

He cannot decide upon a bow or a star. An angel feels trite and abused; even the ones that wink and warble familiar carols rest uneasily on his eyes. He remembers past holidays, with trees the height of giants and baubles the breadth of his arms. Enchanted candles that never fail, wicks that never diminish, and peppermint ribbons to tantalize. Presents cascaded from beneath its wide boughs, and it took a full day to break his way through the layers. His father would sit and smoke from a pipe used but once a year, and his mother would play records from a time far past, her tuneless voice humming along.

His tree has one present beneath it, an empty box he re-wrapped; he opened it two weeks early. Its contents drape his throat and when he closes his eyes, he can imagine her fingers resting there, her signature scent of earth and home and warmth enveloping him. She chose green, and unhappily, he tears his gaze away from the window with its cheery display.

The attack is sudden and his feels the tear of his teeth against cheek as the hand strikes him a second time. "I know who you are!"

The woman is small and slight, and her wand is ignored in her purse. Gray streaks her hair, and the wrinkles around her lips pull angrily as she caws. "You're filth, scum- the lowest of the low!"

The crowd, once inanimate and sparse, thickens behind the woman as she counts his sins out loud. "Your family and you- my son died because of you! He was just a boy- just a boy!"

The murmurs grow in volume, the whispers untranslatable, and the force of their hate swallows him. He tastes the metal of blood in his mouth, and he wants only to escape- to explain and excuse away his actions. He was young; he was foolish; he loved his father; he wanted respect and power. He was scared and alone and desperate. He was stupid and reckless and angry, and he wanted someone- anyone- to see him for himself, and not just a reflection of a legacy he had no part in creating or owning.

"Murderer!" The woman yells and her brittle fist breaks his nose cleanly. The thick current of pain and hot liquid spills into his lips, and carelessly, he wipes it clean with his hand. The woman stands back, her early fervor lagging in the face of his passivity. "Filth. . ."

They back away from him as he moves down the sidewalk, the blood seeping down his face. His wand is in his pocket, his fist is tight around it. He does not have to walk; he does not have to spend a second longer in that street with the blinking lights and staring faces. He can leave in a second- disappear into his flat and his anonymous life of meaningless activity. Instead, he opens the nearest door, bells jingling his entrance. The clerk stares first with concern and then recoils from recognition.

"May I use your washroom?" he asks, and then follows the hallway to where the clerk points silently.

Two hours later, he returns to his flat. The tree greets him silently, its meager needles betraying a growing bald patch toward the front. He places his purchases carefully, with a tenderness that leaves him cold and aching, and when he whispers the charm that sets it all aglow, he finds the scene wanting. It is pathetic and cheap; it is beautiful and lovely- it is altogether too much like hers. He stares unseeing and touches the scarf, his thoughts lingering and missing and desiring.

"Happy Christmas," he tells the tree, and distantly, a car alarm sounds.

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**End Day 185**


	16. One year, Day 221

_**Disclaimer: **__I own nothing._

_**A/N**__: A slightly longer chapter for you this time. Almost there!_

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**VIVAASA**

_By: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 221**

She does not expect the knock on the door; she does not expect to find the person behind it. He is little changed from her memory. He is older and angled, but still vulnerable and angry. He was always needy when they were children, desperate for affection and love and kindness, and she fed off of that need, warm in its permanence and confident in its depth. Theirs was a friendship of give and take, position and purpose, and when she walked away those many months ago, he let go her with barely veiled tolerance. He took her departure as betrayal then, and his green eyes, centered behind dark frames no longer circular in shape, tell her he is angry still.

"Hermione," he greets her.

"Harry," she can barely whisper. He slides through the front door before she can close it, and he takes in her living room with two piercing glances. She sees the disappointment in his shoulders and the confusion in his lips. She hears his questions without their voicing, and she knows he can never understand the ease with which she could walk away. She was a witch once, she remembers. She was a witch- and she is a witch- but she doesn't need it any longer. It has taken too much from her, and she wants to live selfishly for a small while in her life.

"So this is where you live," he says.

She wishes she was wearing something other than an old sweater and jeans. She feels small and self conscious, and he never used to make her feel that way. "Yes."

"You haven't been answering my letters," he tells her. "You stopped nearly two years ago."

"I've been trying to live my life," she explains. "I've been trying to move on-"

"Move on?" he repeats, anger finally mixing in his tones. "We're not your enemy, Hermione- I'm not your enemy. What is there to possibly move on from?"

She wants to answer; she wants to explain, but no amount of words or reasoning will be enough she knows. He has been without a family for too long to understand her loss. He re-made his family, he re-built his life starting with the day of his eleventh birthday, but she's only just begun that journey. "The day you discovered you were a wizard was the day you began knowing who you were, Harry. All that time at Hogwarts- those seven years- were seven years in which you got your answers. You know who you are, but I'm still trying to figure that out. Am I just a witch? Or am I something more- where can I be happy?"

"Just a witch. . . Hermione, you're so much more than just a witch. You're a brilliant witch! You're my best friend and there are so many who love you and miss you, and instead, you've holed yourself up in this tiny place away from all of us. I don't understand." He speaks softly, and she closes her eyes, feeling herself weaken at the gentleness. "You're all alone here, and you don't have to be."

His hands find her shoulders and she opens her eyes, staring up at him. His lips run parallel to her crown, and she wishes for their younger days where heights were matched and she could pretend equality. "I haven't been alone, Harry."

His fingers tighten, and he glances away. "Ginny's left me, you know."

"I know." She always read his letters, always memorized his words. His happy moments and less happy moments, and while she never lifted a pen to reply, she always read. "Things happen as we grow up. We change- our hearts, they change."

"She said that I didn't love her the right way." His thumbs make gentle circles across her collar bone, and her own fingers clench too tightly in her fists.

"Did you love her?" she asks, knowing the answer already.

"I did," he admits to the past tense. "I used to, and now, I miss her, but it's a shallow feeling, and it's nothing compared to missing you."

"Harry-" she tries to start, not having any words to prepare, but his fingers on her throat and the warmth of his hand against her cheek force her to pause. "Please, you know that-"

"You were my best friend, and somehow I missed it- how important you were to everything. I didn't realize it until you left, and now- Hermione, you don't have to choose between these two lives. You can have both."

There was a time where she might have welcomed those words. There was a time, a brief time, where her heart clenched and hurt when he treated her as the pal, as the friend, as the non-entity, without gender or sex or appeal. If things had been different, if her parents hadn't died, perhaps she would have let that blossom into something else. Perhaps, but-

"I love him, Harry." She cannot change the state of her heart; she hasn't the courage or will power to try otherwise.

His hands slip away from her, and she shivers in their absence. He pulls back and shrinks against the doorway. He stares with eyes she holds too dearly, and in them she sees understanding. He can't understand, not really, but she nearly cries from the attempt.

"Come back," he says again as he leaves, and she stares into the empty door frame for too long, wondering how to answer.

Maybe or someday, or-

"Soon."

**End Day 221**


	17. One year, Day 279

_**Disclaimer:**__ None of this belongs to me._

_**A/N: **__Sorry for the delay on this. Posting last three chapters of this now. Thanks again for all of the support._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 279**

He watches his father through the window, the early spring sunshine contrasting sharply with the washed out whites of his father's clothes and hair. The garden is a study in methodology, no two flowers sharing the same spot or color. Blocks of green, blue, red, pink, purple, yellow, and orange circle the stone path, and his father kneels, knees stained by dirt and heat, beside a patch of cockscomb. He turns away from the vista and drinks slowly from his cup of tea.

"He's better now," his mother tells him, fine lines by her eyes where there were never wrinkles before. "His flowers are needy children, and there is always more to do."

He nods and resists the window's beckoning. He thinks of the roses at their former manor, dried and withered; once upon a time, they had received equal care. "And you, Mother?"

She does not smile, but her lips curve still. Her hands spread wide and the room is encompassed in the gesture. "I have a house again."

The house is two bedrooms, a small bathroom, a parlor and a kitchen. It is modest and homely and without charm. The neighborhood is full of similar structures, white fences tailoring the curb sides, and conversation easily overheard between them. "How is your flat?" she asks, the non-smile still lingering over her lips.

It's only slightly larger than the kitchen he now sits in, and at night, the street below intrudes past his door and windows, and he can only sleep with the aid of his wand and a potion. "It's good. I like it."

Her lips disappear behind the rise of her glass, and when they reappear, she frowns, pretenses left behind. "And your work?"

"Occupying." He shelves and dusts and, twice a week, reads out loud for an hour to a gaggle of eight primary students from the pages of a monthly chosen chapter-book. They squeal when the heroes win and clap when the villains fall, and never do they pause and ask the sort of questions _she _used to. Questions that involve '_whys_' and '_hows_' and '_help me understands_.' He can spend eight hours without thinking coherently, or cogently, and it's soothing in its blankness. Whole weeks vanish in blissful non-specifics, and he has no finite memories to draw from or point to at the end of them.

His mother stands, her tall form fuller and thicker than his childhood remembers it; the blond hair, a dull sheen of pale and less pale, rests listlessly on her back. When she speaks, she sounds strangely fragile, and her hands press against the cheap glass that fills the windows. "I wanted to be a dancer when I was your age. I had no real talent, and when your father asked me to marry him, I used it as an excuse to stop. Your father. . . he built me a barre last week."

She pauses, her back to him, and in her stillness, he can hear all of the words left unsaid. The world forever paints their villains in clean lines of black and white, and in that vision, there is no room for ballet barres and rose gardens. And so, the world hides its aberrations in plain view on a Muggle street, with hard water and second-hand dishes. Bitterness is what he feels, but its flavor is nearer and closer to him than most.

Her fingers tap softly against the glass, and from beyond, his father turns in acknowledgment. "Are you happy?" she asks, and the question brings a strange and foreign expression to her lined lips.

He cannot remember when he was last asked the question, and unwillingly, he thinks of when he last felt that faint emotion called happiness. He remembers the mussed bed sheets and the warmth at his side; he remembers the tangled hair caught in his fingers and the gentle whisper of _her _voice in his ear. She rises, too clearly, in his mind, and his breath catches, an ache of something alien trembling beneath his breast. He answers suddenly, and with a voice rich in its self-hate, he speaks honestly.

"No. I'm not happy at all."

**End Day 279**


	18. One year, Day 322

_**Disclaimer: **__None of this belongs to me._

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 322**

She sits cross-legged, notes and books spread around her in a half circle of order and preparation. Her finals begin in the morning, a handful of hours away, and she has not her normal faith in her abilities. Time has slipped from her, disappearing in patches and stretches of the doldrums and the humdrums. Three times she had found herself near Diagon, her feet having taken her there unknowingly. Her purposeful amnesia of habits and practices from her school years have crept up slowly, reminding her of their continued existence. Too many times she has reached for her absent wand, and she can find no one to blame for the self-treachery.

And even now, buried in the mental dust of study and review, her hand draws and her mouth speaks in blatant betrayal. "_Accio _bo-"

When she weeps seconds later, it is not from the pain of a blow to her shoulder. It's a wretched self-inflicted misery that grips her; it's a stubbornly avoided anger that strikes her. She made her choice- she made her decision. She lived for ten years of her life as her parents had, dependent upon the frailties of physical limitations to survive. Her parents had lived even longer, as had much of the world, in seeming happiness without ever touching a wand or casting a spell. Surely, that contentedness they had, she can have it too.

But magic is a drug, a bittersweet addiction that she's too weak to win against. She remembers all too clearly the completeness it gives her, the strum of life and joy and glorious abandon that fills her blood when the string of energy escapes from her.

The walls accuse her silent distress with unrepentant reminders. The portrait of her parents stares down at her prone form, their bodies unmoving in their captured smiles. There is no essence caught in their photograph, no small semblance of life beyond that stilled moment of time. There are only their frozen smiles and the memories she carries of them. Her mother loved sweets and yet never cooked them; her father practiced calligraphy and yet his blots were terrible. Every Christmas Eve, they shared a bottle of white wine and let her sip from their glasses. Her mother hated umbrellas but loved galoshes; her father built ship models and made her a kite for her fourth birthday from tissue paper and balsa wood. They always arrived two hours early on the days she returned from school, their eager, expectant faces the first things she saw when alighting from the train.

She misses her parents; she misses the existence of them, the dependability of them- she misses the assurance of having family and the love that came with it.

She misses her parents, but, she realizes now, with her wand held too tightly in her hand, the polished surface ingrained against her skin, that she misses magic more. She misses being a witch more, and she can't run from it. Not anymore.

"_Accio _book," she whispers, and the surge of joy is inescapable.

**End Day 322**


	19. One year, Day 364

_**Disclaimer: **__All rights et all belong to JKR. I claim no ownership of the characters or universe therein used and detailed._

_**A/N: **__VIVAASA came from the Potter's Place 'Exile Challenge Prompt.' Thank you all for your patience and support while following this. It's ever appreciated. And now, for the last chapter:_

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**VIVAASA**

_by: carpetfibers_

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**One year, Day 364**

The job was easily discarded, as was the small flat. He left the tree, preserved by charm and incantation, with his father who found a place for it in his roses. He had no good-byes or farewells, and the shop owner accepted his brief thanks with a mute understanding. And that morning, when he awoke, he was unable to deny the emotion that flooded him when he withdrew his suitcase from so many months before. He is bitter and stubborn and unyielding; his selfishness is all encompassing; and yet, still, he is hopeful.

He is hopeful, and so he leaves.

He has no umbrella and his shoes are soaked by an unrelenting drizzle. The city rain never torrents, it never pours; the rain is misery and sullenness, and he enters the park with his heart racing and his suitcase heavy. His feet slow despite himself, and when he nears the fountain, he stops entirely, his eyes caught in the mirage of memory and hopefulness. The bench is unchanged, its paint chipped and peeling. He sits, relishing the strength of its duration and warmth of the wood against his soaked back. The humidity is choking, and yet he breathes with an ease and carelessness that speaks of something momentous.

It is she who sees him first, her clothes charmed against the rain and her wand tucked up her sleeve.

She sees him across the fountain, through the twin haze of cascade and drizzle. His shirt is wrinkled with damp and travel, and his hair lies flat across his forehead. He is smiling in his half-hearted way, the lips barely curved, and his eyes, a perfection of entitlement and neediness, meet hers with a vulnerable directness that forces her forward. He looks up at her nearing and a suitcase sits at his feet. She recognizes its worn leather and desperately, she searches his face for a confirmation. She wants to tell him everything, to say it all and admit to it all. _I miss you _and _I need you _and _I love you_- yet, when she opens her mouth, it is a reminder of an earlier time.

"Are you hungry?" she asks.

He notes it all, the unkempt hair and the familiar indentation in her sleeve. Revelation overwhelms him, and the surge of feeling in his breast is potent and heady. He nods once and stands, his hands already lifting to cup her face and touch her skin.

"Are you cold?" He nods again, and she pulls him tenderly to her breast. "Come home with me, then. You can stay with me."

_Always_, her touch tells him. _Always and always and forever and ever_, her caress repeats, and the dulled hum of the rain cloaks his fervent answer.

"Yes."

**End day 364**

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**End VIVAASA**

_Feb09-May09_


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